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FIFA expanding World Cup to 48 teams is so very FIFA

In this July 13, 2014 file photo, Germany's Bastian Schweinsteiger holds up the World Cup trophy as the team celebrates their 1-0 victory over Argentina after the World Cup final soccer match between Germany and Argentina at the Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. FIFA is about to make the World Cup a bigger and, it hopes, richer event. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko, file)

It sure is nice to be past the Sepp Blatter era in FIFA, now that soccer’s international governing body isn’t always thinking of money first, and forever looking at ways to shamelessly grow profits even at the expense of — wait, the new guy did what now?

FIFA announced Tuesday that it will expand the World Cup from 32 teams to 48, adding 16 games to the existing 64-game schedule in a move that will, it says, boost revenues by about US$1 billion over current projections.

President Gianni Infantino’s plan, which will go into effect for the 2026 tournament, which could very well include games in Canada, will provide a reset from the 2022 event, which is currently scheduled to take place in the winter because it is too bloody hot to play soccer in the summer in Qatar. You recall the Qatar bid: the one that was insane from the outset and drew immediate suspicions of mass bribery that eventually led to Blatter’s downfall, so at least the Qatar World Cup has that going for it.

While this new development doesn’t approach the level of the Qatar foolishness, what with the blistering heat and the fanciful idea of air-conditioned outdoor stadiums and the migrant slave labour, it is still a decidedly unwelcome way for the new regime to start.

At what point, exactly, did anyone look at the World Cup, a massive undertaking that already lasts for more than a month, and determine that the one thing it really needed was more games? It’s like sitting through four hours of the Academy Awards and deciding it needed another couple of musical numbers.

FIFA sounds excited by the prospect of adding new countries to the World Cup mix by increasing the number of qualifying slots that go to the lesser soccer continents like Asia and Africa, which is a nice idea in theory but in practice will only dilute the field and dramatically increase the number of games that will pit a contender against a happy-to-be-there squad. The World Cup is a very top-heavy affair: only eight nations have won it since its inception in 1930, and only 12 have made it as far as the final. With such a talent gap between the powerhouse countries at the top and the minnows who survive continental qualifying at the bottom, there are already plenty of games on the schedule where one team sits back and tries to bore its opponent to death. Yes, more of that, please.

FIFA executives should have cottoned on to the fact that expansion was a bad idea when the initial proposal for an opening round of “playoff” games that would have weeded out 16 teams after just one appearance was rejected as widely unpopular. (And, fair enough: Imagine if the Canadian men finally qualified for a World Cup, at home no less, and the historic run lasted for all of 90 minutes plus stoppage time.) Instead, they are planning a format with three 16-team groups that would play among themselves, with two from each advancing to the knockout stage.

The problems with this idea are immediately obvious. The group stage already has an issue with late games in which neither side has much of an incentive to win, so both teams play for a conservative draw; FIFA has tried to combat this by making sure that all the teams in the group play their final game at the same time.

But if there are only three teams in a group, one of them wouldn’t play on the final day of round-robin action, leaving the entirely expected possibility that two teams needing a draw to advance would simply pass the ball back and forth toward a 0-0 conclusion while the third team sits at the hotel and bangs its collective head against the wall. Sounds exciting! (Less so for the hotel.)

FIFA’s internal document on expansion has, according to the Associated Press, suggested that one possible solution to the three-team problem would be to eliminate the possibility of draws in the group stage. Which would mean, yes, more shootouts.

If you were drawing up a list of the things that the World Cup absolutely does not need more of, shootouts would be right near the top, after bribery and before extra games involving weaker countries and theme songs performed by pop stars.

The thing with any international event of this scope, whether it’s soccer or hockey or basketball, is that the games involving the no-hopers are always a drag on the overall quality of the tournament. Organizers convince themselves that more teams will simply increase interest, and then at the end you having Canada dropping 10 goals on Latvia at the world junior hockey championship and it all seems kind of pointless.

FIFA is aware of this, acknowledging that a 48-team field will reduce the “absolute quality” of the World Cup, but hey, more money. So, look for a 2026 event in which the lesser soccer powers have every reason to play 120 minutes in a defensive shell and hope to get lucky in a shootout.

It was hard to imagine a scenario in which people were likely to get nostalgic about the charm of Qatar 2022, but FIFA just might have done it.